Fresh Air

No, Terry Gross did not invite me for an interview on her show. (Though in the interest of keeping education and the arts on the table of national discourse, I think she should.) Rather, this is about hotels and windows.

In Singapore, I had to fight with the air-conditioning. Always too cold and not user-friendly to control the temperature and no windows in the room that opened. Here in Newark it’s the heat. Too hot. This Goldilocks wants the room that’s just right, but again, no user-friendly occupant-controlled thermostat that was working for me. I assumed the windows wouldn’t open in this new world of centrally-controlled hermetically-sealed environments. But lo and behold, one did. Fresh air and the sounds of the city came in, but it helped.

Whether politics or hotel rooms, local control and decision-making is often the healthier choice. One-size-fits-all central control is not always the best. Like the time I gave an evening workshop in Canada in the dead of winter and the heat had been automatically turned off for the night and no one knew how to turn it on and we did clapping plays with gloves on and moved in thick winter coats. While I was coughing and sick. That was fun! ((Not!)

Hotel owners, at least keep the windows openable. That’s all I have to say on the matter.